Twenty-seven miles beyond the Golden Gate, the craggy Farallon Islands have been home to fur-seal hunters from Russia, a gold-rush-era egg business, and even a nuclear waste dump. Today they’re home to 250,000 sea birds, not to mention seals, sea lions, whales, and sharks. What makes these stark-looking islands so attractive to wildlife?

What are you afraid of? Snakes? Spiders? Heights? This After Dark event investigated the psychology and biology of fear, and included Damian Cooksey confronting his fear by demonstrating the sport of highlining far above visitors’ heads.

Filmmaker Douglas Gayeton talks about the making of his film, "Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey" following a "mixed-reality" screening at the Exploratorium and on Exploratorium Island in the virtual world, Second Life, part of Cinema Arts event Fabricated Realities.

Overnight eclipse viewing party at Exploratorium begins July 31, 2008 at
9pm. and continues through Friday, August 1 in the wee hours.

San Francisco's Exploratorium brings its fifth eclipse expedition team to
remote Xinjiang Province in Northwestern China, very close to the Mongolian
border, where the Exploratorium will webcast a total solar eclipse live to
the world. Spend the Night at the Exploratorium! See the eclipse in person
live at the Exploratorium. Pack your sleeping bag and camp out on the museum
floor for an overnight eclipse party...or come to the viewing party in Second Life and enjoy the live webcast, exhibits, and music.

Webcasts made possible through the generosity of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Jim Clark Endowment for Internet Education, the McBean Family Foundation.

Bandwidth and infrastructure support for connectivity to the California Research and Education Network and to other Internet2-connected networks provided by the Corporation for Educational Networks Initiatives in California (CENIC).